The Man Who Would Be King
by LVDB
Summary: What if a very different group of siblings found the wardrobe...?
1. Chapter 1

**Author Notes:** Again, I'm not sure if I'll continue this or leave it as a oneshot.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 1: Peter Wiggin, a.k.a. "Locke"<strong>

Okay, I hadn't anticipated this.

Ender's favorite piece of furniture had never interested me much. I suppose it was impressive enough, if you're into 19th century home furnishing: a wardrobe five feet wide and nearly ten feet high, carved from rosewood. Lions' heads peered from each corner like gargoyles on a cathedral, sitting atop pseudo-Doric false columns. Whiplike branches from carved trees spiraled around wardrobe's edges. Think Celtic knotwork reimagined by Tim Burton and you have a pretty good idea.

It creaked a bit, sometimes of its own accord. The sound usually resembled the sort of cracks you'd expect from old wood, but once in a while, it seemed a bit more like hands tapping the interior. Apparently, the thing had passed down our mother's side of the family for a while; long enough to qualify as a Venerable Family Heirloom…

Two moons shone in the sky above me. Normally, this would have seemed a bit peculiar. They bathed the forest in far more moonlight than I would have seen on earth. Everything glared white. Snowfall that I could charitably describe as a blizzard enshrouded everything so thoroughly that at some moments it seemed like daytime.

I shivered. Despite the fur jacket I'd wrapped around my shoulders earlier, the wind in this place bit hard. It screamed through trees' branches. Snow whipped against my face until I hunched inward. The coat smelled of mothballs.

…I admit that I'd spared the wardrobe a moment of research when I was seven. It must have been acquired somewhere in New England during the 1850's, since Josiah Brown brought it with him when he came to Utah and started Mom's branch of the family.

From there, I was on mistier ground.

I knew from dinner-table conversation and archival research that Josiah had joined Murray Spear's Association of Beneficence. That would have placed him – and the wardrobe - in Massachusetts sometime between 1848 and 1853. Family tradition held that he'd participated in the cult's attempt ill-fated attempt to construct a god-machine. He'd left shortly thereafter. Usually, I would have discounted the story as romantic nonsense, but the details seemed to fit. The wardrobe resembled nothing I'd seen in antebellum New England. A connection to the early Spiritualist movement would explain a lot.

…At the moment, though, the wardrobe's exterior was the least of my worries.

I walked along a row of knotted black trees. When I say "black", I'm not speaking poetically: the trees were blacker than iron railings. Their limbs twisted in the wind. Once in a while, though, the branches swayed in the wrong direction, as if they were pushing against the breeze.

Bells jingled in the distance. Snow lashed my face; I looked down the path, but could only see a white haze. A whip cracked.

I jumped behind a snow-lump that I suspected was a log, and backed against it. If I couldn't see anything a few feet in front of me, I doubted that anyone else could, either. Just to be certain, though, I allowed the snow to accumulate on my hair and clothes. Part of the snow-pile against my back melted on my clothes. I felt damp.

A minute passed. Another…

My hands hurt. I tried to clench them. The fingers refused to bend, as if they were swollen. No time for that now, though. I held my breath as the bells came closer.

Some sort of vehicle was passing me. An animal snorted. I heard the crunch of hoofbeats on the snow. Horses, perhaps? They were dragging something on skids. It made a gentle _shhlleeesshh_.

It stopped.

"Stand up."

_Don't even breathe…_

"I said stand up!"

I'd like to say that I emerged from hiding because I realized that the jig was up. Unfortunately, it wasn't that simple. Something about that voice…every muscle in my body felt antsy, twitchy, as if they _wanted_ to move. I jolted to my feet in spite of myself.

A pale woman appraised me from a perch in a sleigh drawn by eight white reindeer. She was pale; unnaturally so. Even sitting down, the woman towered over me. Although a foxskin blanket hid her legs from view, I was fairly sure she was well over six feet tall. She wore a crown, crudely wrought, and cradled a long white scepter in her hands that could have been painted wood. Her dress only added to the bleached glare: like seemingly everything else in this place, it was white. The dress sparkled when she moved. Someone had sewn clear stones or glass into the fabric. The dress's shoulders puffed out in slashed frills, like a swan's wings. And something else…

I looked closely.

Yep. The snow curved around her. None of the flakes touched her skin.

A filthy little man glared from the driver's seat. He wore a wool coat with embroidered sleeves and a golden pendant around his neck. A greasy gray beard completed the ensemble. He looked remarkably like a Cairn terrier.

He leaped down and shuffled toward me. I found myself rooted where I stood. Not ideal, but under the circumstances, I didn't like my chances of running for it anyway. The manikin drew a knife and held it to my throat. It had a single edge, nine or ten inches long, with pattern welding on the other side. While I absently noted the rust on the blade, the little man looked to the woman. Waiting.

The woman sneered.

"_You_," she said. "What are you, and how _dare_ you hide from your Queen?"

This would require some finagling…

The great advantage of being my age is that you have an enormous edge when playing dumb. I pitched my voice high, with just a hint of weepy fear. Stupid Peter, my sister had called him – a useful character to have around in a pinch. For once, the cold worked in my favor, lending my stammer an extra air of authenticity.

"I…I beg your pardon…I didn't know—er—Your Majesty."

The woman tilted her head slightly. She looked me up and down.

"What _are_ you?" she repeated.

Notice: "what" was I, not "who" was I. Of course, that could suggest any number of things. I prepared an answer that I hoped was simultaneously stupid enough and broad enough that it could give me more information.

I racked my brain, and a name came up.

"I…er…Hyrum, Your Majesty. My name's H-Hyrum Graff."

The woman's lips thinned, and I noticed her hands tighten around her scepter.

_Careful, Peter…_

"A beardless dwarf of some sort?" she said.

_Hmm…_

She'd rapped out the question quickly, but with a coating of honey on the edges that she must have assumed would disguise her impatience. Mustn't disappoint the girl, though…I gave her my best hopeful look.

"I…I'm not sure what you-"

Her eyes widened.

"Human?" she snapped.

Well, that didn't sound promising. On the other hand, I doubted that I could impersonate a "beardless dwarf" very well…

"Y-Yes, Your Majesty."

A normal child might have believed that the woman's demeanor changed. That child wouldn't have noticed how fake the smile was (forgot to contract your orbicularis oculi, dear…), or the tightness of her jaw, or the way that her shoulders remained stiff as she held out her hands and welcomed me onto her sled.

Needless to say, I put on an oblivious grin and hopped aboard.

The woman wrapped me in a fur blanket and cuddled next to me, patting me on the head as she did so. The gloves were rough. They seemed like animal skin of some kind, but I couldn't place it. She flashed me a smile – the sort of smile you'd give a child when you sneak them cookies past their bedtime. I noticed that the snowflakes no longer touched me.

"Tell me…Hyrum," she said. "How did you come to Narnia?"

So…it _was_ Narnia after all. I mentally ran through the stories my younger brother had told me before he left for Battle School – the stories I'd dismissed as lies.

"I…er…I came in through the wardrobe, Your Majesty."

The woman furrowed her brow. She tweaked my nose gently, and I suppressed my indignation long enough to conjure an idiotic giggle. This seemed to please her.

"Call me Jadis," she said.

"Yes, J-Jadis," I repeated, making sure to stumble over the word.

Jadis smirked, and I breathed an inward sigh of relief. In my experience, when heads of state ask you to treat them informally, they expect you to be uncomfortable about it. Besides, it never hurts to lay flattery on thick when they believe you're too stupid to be subtle.

Ender had said he'd met a creature of some kind here…Greek mythology…What _was_ it?

"Hyrum, do you have any brothers or sisters?"

"I…er…well, there's my brother Ender, Your Majes…Jadis," I said.

She leaned forward. I noticed that, while the ends of her sleeves were purple, the rest of her dress was white. The purple was rich and deep, unlike the not-quite-purple on her servant's shirt. For a moment, I wondered whether the pair's clothing-makers had used cockles and lichens, respectively. Industrial dyes seemed unlikely in this place; everything appeared hand-carved, and even the woman's jewelry was crudely wrought. From the rust on the dwarf's knife, I was guessing they didn't have much steel, either.

Ender had mentioned something about a pretender to the throne, and some sort of war…

"Would you like something to drink, Hyrum?" she said.

"I…"

The woman widened her eyes and ringed her mouth in an "o" as if she'd just had the grandest inspiration in the world.

"You look so very cold, Hyrum…Something warm? _Tea_, perhaps?"

Before I could answer, she withdrew a glass phial from her seat cushion. It contained white liquid with a red substance of some sort suspended in it – an almost-liquid, like hot wax. It moved around in clumps, rather like a lava lamp's bubbles, except that the clumps were twisted triangles instead of soft blobs. She removed the stopper. Whatever the stuff was, it smelled like a mixture of Pepsi and blood. Jadis tapped the bottle with her index finger.

_Dap. Dap._

Two drops fell. The snow around them melted and reformed just as quickly into crystalline domes of ice. Steam obscured their interiors. She nodded to the dwarf, and he waddled over and shattered each of them. The first contained a hot drink of some sort, and the second…

"Those…do not look very edible," she said.

I blinked. Yep. A pile of Hershey bars, complete with plastic wrappers. For the first time in an already unusual evening, I realized just how surreal this situation was. The dwarf bowed and stretched his arms above his head, holding the plate like some groveling emissary on an ancient Near Eastern tomb painting.

And just like that, my situation assessment went from "very bad" to "completely screwed". Still, I could at least confirm a hunch…

I gasped loudly.

"Oh, my…Can _everyone_ here do that?" I said.

If she'd been dealing with an equal, a firm "NO" would have been the correct answer regardless of the truth of the matter. I had two things in my favor, though: her arrogance and her audience. Jadis ran her fingers through my hair.

"Of course not," she said. "Only very, _very_ special people like me can do that. Would you like me to teach you sometime?"

I nodded.

"Your Maje…er…Jadis?" I said.

"Mmm?"

"W-would you like one?"

I held out a Hershey bar, and Jadis took it. For a moment, she just stared at it. She raised her eyebrow.

Okay. First, she didn't seem to know what plastic was, which further confirmed that this place's technological level fell pretty far down the Kardashev scale. I don't care how isolated you are back on Earth: even the !Kung and Kayapo use plastic buckets. It had been a reasonable mistake, I suppose – _if_ you'd never seen plastic before and believed you'd just summoned your guest some rare delicacy. Which brought me to my second point...

"Did—did you just—er…magic that information out of my mind, Your Majesty?"

For the first time in our interview, her eyes narrowed. She'd shed the fake smile now; she was looking at me very closely. I felt a cold lurch in my stomach.

"Have some _tea_, Hyrum."

"My…um…begging your pardon, Maje—"

"Jadis!" she snapped.

"Begging your pardon, Jadis, but my mother always told me never to accept treats from strangers…"

Her jaw tightened. I could swear I heard her teeth grinding.

"…No matter how beautiful," I finished.

Sadly, it didn't help. She snatched the goblet from the dwarf and held it to my lips. The cup was alabaster, with four rubies inlaid along the base.

"Drink. Up."

Well, nothing for it. I took a sip. As soon as the tea passed my lips, I felt my body melt into the seat, limp and tingly. Completely calm, as if I was enjoying a massage. I'd felt something like it once before – back when they removed the monitor. Back then, it had been pain killers. Whatever this stuff was, I was guessing it had narcotic effects. Never mind; I'd handle it later.

When she saw me drink, Jadis's shoulders relaxed slightly.

"You say you have a brother," she said. "Any others?"

I took another sip. Mental processes seemed fine so far – I ran through a few square roots without any hassle. Still…

"Er…" I said. "There's, um…"

That's right! Ender _had_ met someone here: Mister Tumsey, or Tomney, or something. He'd told Ender that he was an agent of some sort for the "White Witch"…and three guesses who that might be. He'd kept asking how many of us there were.

The woman waited. She stroked a brass brooch on her neck. It was crudely cast, probably from a wooden impression in clay. Her earrings, also a copper alloy of some sort, seemed to have been made of thin bronze sheets stamped with a sixteen-pointed star. By the look of it, Narnian craftsmen wouldn't put up much of a fight if we started shipping modern jewelry in any quantity. One thing at a time, though.

_Let's start at three, shall we?_

"…Ah, there's me, and…"

Had Tomney reported back to Jadis? He'd let Ender leave Narnia unharmed. That argued for "no" – no bureaucrat, magical or otherwise, would go out of his way to report failure to his boss, let alone treachery. Then again, maybe she monitored her subordinates closely enough to…

Best err on the safe side.

"…and Ender," I said.

She nodded.

"…and Valentine…"

A long pause. My patience paid off – she grabbed me roughly by the shoulder.

"And a _fourth_?" she hissed.

I grabbed a Hershey bar from the dwarf and unwrapped it. As piggishly as I could manage, I stuffed it into my mouth and spoke at the same time. The renewed show of stupidity seemed to relax her.

Four. She wanted _four_ of us, for some reason.

_Well, then…_

"Umshh….Yesh….mmm…" I said. "Yesh…Peter. Peter'sh his name."

Ender had mentioned that the time streams between this place and Earth worked a little weirdly. If Jadis had heard anything from Tomney about my family, I'd just dealt with the inexplicable missing brother. "Hyrum", after all, could have been born after Ender's first visit. Now as long as she hadn't heard Ender's _last_ name...

I jammed another piece of chocolate into my mouth and tried not to gag. My face felt sticky. I jumped to my feet like Fontleroy on caffeine pills.

"Ooh!" I said. "Yoush could meet ush all! If I told 'em, you could give ush all shweetsh...urfsh om monmn…."

The fake smile returned. She cradled my face with her hand. I restrained my satisfied grin when I saw the momentary curl of her lip after she accidentally touched a chocolate smear.

"You would bring them to me?" she said. "Really? I would _very_ much like that, Hyrum. I live all alone in a beautiful house, you see…"

_Gingerbread, perhaps?_ I thought.

Jadis sighed dramatically. She pouted.

"…and I have no one to share my kingdom with," she said. "I need a prince. Very, very badly."

She twiddled my fingers between her own. I swallowed the chocolate. It felt like gulping down a block of wood. Time to play the obnoxious middle schooler from the A.D.D. generation to the hilt…

"Oh, yeah!" I said. "Of course! We could help you fight Aslan!"

Her smile disappeared, and her hand froze next to mine. Her whole body stiffened. I hadn't thought it possible for her to whiten more than she was, but she did.

"_Where_ did you hear—"

"Oh!" I chirped. "Ender told me. I didn't think this place was real at first, so I didn't ask questions…My brother can be a little numskull sometimes…A-a-a-a-a-nyway, he said this horrible 'Aslan' person was invading, and you needed to stop him…"

I suddenly got serious.

"You _do_ have guns, right?" I said. "I mean, swords are nice and all, but I don't think I could swing one."

"Guns…?"

"Yeah, you know," I said. "You point 'em, and they make a loud noise, and the other guy drops dead."

I raised my thumb and pointed my index finger at the forest. As I regaled my new acquaintance with _peew!—peew!—peew! _noises, I reflected that perhaps Valentine's absence wasn't such a bad thing after all.

I looked up.

"So…you got any?" I said.

"No."

_No firearms! Hahahahahaha!_

I hung my head and lowered my voice to a groan.

"…Aw," I said. "That's too bad."

Jadis took the bottom of my chin again and pulled me up until I met her eyes. They were gray all over; the irises were only a darker shade. The saccharine-sweet voice returned.

"Let me deal with Aslan," she said. "Just bring your family, Hyrum…and you can have all the sweeties you want."

I brightened up.

"Oh, _yes_, your Majesty! Of course, your Majesty! Er…Jadis."

"Do you see those two hills?" she said. "My house is between them."

Ivory beads on the bottom the hem of her dress clicked together as she stood up and pointed. I followed her finger to a valley. A cluster of towers rose in the distance – they were white, and slick, and polished. Barbs jutted out the sides. The entire complex looked a bit like a giant piece of coral growing from a snowy plain. Green fires burned at its base. I saw enormous shadows move along the walls. Nothing was casting them.

"Looks…beautiful," I said.

I figured some final reassurance was in order, so I whipped up my best impression of the junkies I'd seen hanging out in the bathroom during school. My voice cracked a little. Sadly, it wasn't entirely an act…but again, I'd deal with that later.

"Could I have a just _little_ more tea, please?"

"I wouldn't want to spoil your appetite," she said.

Jadis gently pushed me from the sleigh and patted my head. That smooth, superior smile flashed once more – a true smile this time, the "I've-got-you-now-and-you're-too-stupid-to-realize-it-yet" smile. I knew it well; a personal favorite.

"Until then," she said.

The whip cracked. Eight white reindeer thumped through the snow far faster than they should have been able to. A cloud of white rose around me, and they disappeared into the gloom. I felt inside my pocket. The piece of chocolate was melting in my palm, and I withdrew my hand quickly. While I didn't need an infinite supply to get it analyzed, I wasn't taking chances. I started the long walk back. With any luck, the portal was still open. Pine needles prickled. Tree branches rasped my hands.

I wondered: was this how Cortez felt when he met Montezuma's emissaries? Pizarro as he watched Atahualpa's ransom fill a room with gold? Clive after Plassey?

Tree branches turned to coats again. With a creak, the wardrobe's doors swung open. I tumbled out, laughing.

* * *

><p>The 'chocolate' had turned to icy slush as soon as I'd left the wardrobe.<p>

I found my sister in the dining room, curled over a green laptop. The _tic-tic_ of her typing didn't miss a beat when I entered; her eyes remained on the white glow of the monitor. Even when she slurped from the coffee mug beside her, her attention never wavered. She saw me, though.

"Nice coat," she said.

I looked down. Oh. Right.

"…Normally, I wouldn't have thought you'd go for mink, but I guess with all the squirrels already dead—"

I waved a hand and shushed her before leaning over the monitor. Demonsthenes' contacts. Where were…I snapped my fingers.

"Val," I said.

"Yeah?"

"Do we have anybody on our list who could provide us – _discreetly_, mind you – with a number of machine pistols and ammunition?" I said.

"What, you mean _here_?"

I found myself pacing, my hands behind my back.

"Yes, here. We wouldn't need to store them for long. This'd just be a trans-shipment point, so we could schedule the deliveries in small batches on sick-days before Father and Mother come home. Christmas _is _around the corner, so with proper packaging and a disguised UPS truck…No, on second thought, too small. We'll move the wardrobe. Rent out a storage space... easier to conceal. A huge risk either way, with Graff watching us, but-"

Valentine raised an eyebrow.

"Trans-shipment point to _where?_" she said.

"Vally, dear," I said. "How would you like to play kingmaker in a preindustrial civil war?"

Valentine rolled her eyes and resumed typing.

"Sorry I asked," she muttered.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: Andrew Wiggin, a.k.a. "Ender"**

My eyes blurred. Afterimages from our flash guns appeared every time I blinked. After a day of climbing and pushing off the "stars" in the Battleroom, lactic acid was burning from my rotator cuffs to my adductors, and everything in between. My flash suit reeked of sweat.

"Ho, Ender."

I forced myself to straighten.

"Ho, Bean."

The boy's eyes narrowed slightly as he looked at me. About my age, supposedly, though his spindly body suggested otherwise. My second-in-command. So to speak.

"Are you...?" he said.

_Energy. Pep. _

_…Right._

"Get some rest, Bean," I said.

I tensed the muscles in my cheeks until they produced a smile.

"You're sure you're—"

"Go to sleep," I said. "At the rate they're going, they'll probably wake us up in an hour to fight three armies at the same time."

Bean snorted. He gave me another look, but nodded and headed for bed.

Seventeen steps. I heard his feet slap the floor ever so lightly as he propelled his forty-odd pounds of body weight into the bunk. If the past was any guide, he'd fall asleep in the next ten minutes.

I waited fifteen, and then slumped. The armrests met the Battle School's artificial gravity with equal-and-opposite force. The metal jabbed into my shoulders. The cursor flashed on the screen, drawing me toward Bean's latest ideas. He'd written them out in excruciating detail, along with diagrams. Tactical variants on tactical variants…

* * *

><p><em>Three figures crunch through the snow in a courtyard. They seem like shadows; the wind's screech drowns their voices, and the snowfall blots their faces. They flit through a maze of boulders. The foremost figure moves on two legs, but his gait seems off, like an ostrich's walk except for the way that his upper body pitches from side to side when he steps. He falls forward onto his hands. Or legs...he moves faster now. On four legs.<em>

* * *

><p>"Huh?"<p>

I blinked.

The computer _bleeped_ happily as it reminded me that another hour had passed. The monitor's white glow bathed my eyes with a fuzzy, dry sensation, like a shower in reverse.

I let my head loll backward for just a moment longer. Just a little…

* * *

><p><em>Closer. The figures move into view. The leader pads through the courtyard silently; a tail swishes behind him as he walks. He looks back…a dog of some kind? No, too big. A wolf. A very large wolf. The figure that trails behind him only exaggerates the effect; he's small, and walks on two legs, with a head slightly too large for his body. Not a child, but not an adult yet, either. Younger teen, probably. A woman completes the trio. Her curves answer the question that her height evokes: Yes, she is a woman; and yes, she is over six feet tall. Offwhite fur lines the sleeves of her robe.<em>

_As my vision descends and approaches them through the field of boulders, I see a face. It appears suddenly, carved into black stone. Its eyes are wide. Curly tufts of hair wreathe it, and two horns poke out from the curls. It screams, but sound does not emerge. The face keeps screaming. It does not move. I know "it". Him. Or at least, I knew the statute's model._

_"Work quickly if you want to live."_

_The woman has spoken. Two moons illuminate her face, painting pale skin blue. I realize that I do not know her, although I know this place. The snow fears to touch her when it falls. It swirls around her like a white veil. _

_The smaller figure nods. He stands in her shadow, and I cannot see him well. A sharp noise echoes through the courtyard, bounces against the walls. I laugh at the false similarity, the feeling of something vaguely familiar in this alien place. _

_It sounds like a firearm being cocked._

_The woman points to a stone lion. The sculptor, whoever he was, must have been a master. The whiskers that hang from its lips cannot be more than a micron's breadth wider than their real-life counterparts._

_I try to lean forward, but the vision does not oblige. Maddening. What made that noise? The boy, obviously. Something the boy holds. I squint, looking for the source. A toy? Something clockwork, maybe, like the porcelain dwarves in yellow silk that moved around in Mr. Tumnus' windup box. Or—_

_BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM- BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM- BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM!_

_Stone pieces fly from the lion's head like splinters from a wood chipper. The whiskers snap off. Deep gouges appear in the stone eyes. Teeth fracture. An ear cracks. Detaches. _

_The wind carries the tang of spent ammunition. Copper casings melt holes the snow. _

_For a moment, the woman and the wolf say nothing. They are frozen – as frozen as the statues that populate the courtyard. The wolf's breaths form clouds. He is breathing rapidly, every muscle arched and tense. The woman does not breathe at all. _

_"How…" she says._

_A loaded beginning. I hear a dozen unspoken conclusions to that sentence. She settles for one. Like the tone she assumes, it is businesslike. I am not convinced._

_"…how many can you provide?"_

_The smaller figure speaks. His voice confirms the obvious. It is higher than usual, but descends occasionally into the deeper modulations of adolescence._

_"For now?" he says. "Not many. Couple'a squads worth, complete with ammunition. Wait till we get a better transshipment point."_

_Her arm shoots out. I can barely see the movement until it finishes. She moves faster than the cadets at hand-to-hand training. Faster than the instructors. She snaps up the weapon and cradles it in her hands. Her fingers curl around the grip…and it does look like a toy. But for the bones, her fingers could probably wrap around the boy's neck more than once. But then, those fingers are longer than any I've ever seen. They are thin and spindly, and terminate in sharp nails._

_She clicks her tongue._

_"It's not a crossbow," the boy says quickly. _

_The woman raises her eyebrows._

_"Don't take me for a fool—"_

_"I mean that you'll need new tactics."_

_The wolf snarls. He pads around the boy like a lion stalking its tamer, yet he keeps his eyes on the woman._

_"Highness, we don't need these—"_

_"-and hands," the boy adds. "You'll need hands, too." _

_Deftly done – like something Bean would think of saying, but lack the charisma to pull off. Objections silenced. The woman laughs. The wolf comes to heel at her feet when she snaps her fingers. She scratches behind the wolf's ears._

_"My poor, valiant Maugrim," she says. "Worried about losing your place on the battle-line, hmm?"_

_She blows gently on his muzzle. His ears go back, and he dips his head._

_"Shhh," she whispers. "You won't be replaced. Not my loyal huntsman…"_

_ A moment passes, and she turns to the boy._

_"You understand how to use these things?" she says._

_"Theoretically, yes. Give me troops and a month to practice, and I'll figure the rest-"_

_"We ford Beruna in two weeks," she says. "I'll give you fewer than fifty of servants and a free hand."_

_"On the front lines, naturally."_

_His tone is not eager. Sarcasm drips from it. She smirks and replies in kind._

_"Why my __dear__ young man," she says. "I wouldn't dream of spoiling your little experiment with anything less than a challenge. Especially now that we…understand each other."_

_The boy steps into the light, and I nearly choke on my tongue. I see once again the face from the mirror in the Room At The End Of The World. The face that a wolf-child wore in a nightmare I've never forgotten. It is thinner now, and most of the baby fat is gone. Fine-featured. It doesn't matter. _

**_…'I'm your brother, Ender. I love you'…_**

_ "And with whom have I struck this bargain, hmm?" the woman says. "Is it Hyrum? Or Ender? Or…?"_

_"Locke," he says. "But you can call me Peter."_

_She chuckles at this._

_"Someday," she says, "I might tell you my other names."_

_My brother holds out his hand. A moment's hesitation, and the woman's spidery fingers curl around his. Brown eyes meet blue. They smile at each other. _

_The cobra and the mongoose._

* * *

><p>BLEEP.<p>

BLEEP.

BLEEP.

I opened my eyes, and saw white.

BLEEP.

BLEEP.

Focus. Fluorescent lights hummed above me. The left side of my neck ached.

BLEEP.

I shivered. My feet rested on cold metal. Blood flowed through my arms again, bringing needles.

BLEEP.

BLE—

_Click._

Alarm off. Eyes open.

Strange...the clock read 2:34 A.M. in red neon script. Or whatever passed for 2:34 A.M. in Earth's orbit. The alarm didn't seem to have woken anyone. Stranger still, I knew I hadn't set it. Bean's breath gently wafted in and out on the cot next to me.

Something blinked. My attention snapped there immediately: a cursor on my computer. A message winked in and out of existence alongside it.

PLAY "WAR IN FANTASYLAND": Y/N?

The image blinked inquisitively.

I scratched my cheek and felt the fuzzy sensations that come after a nap.

Blink?

Blink?

Well, at least it was _honest _this time, unlike the last exercise in sadism that had called itself a "fantasy game".

The first fantasy game had been philosophical, in its own twisted way. Behind every challenge - the wolf-children, the Giant's poisonous drink, the mirror with Peter's face - it had always hinted at an unspoken question.

**_Are _**_you a killer, Ender?_

And maybe I'd answered it. In any case, the philosopher had apparently yielded his place to the technician. The question had become a command.

_Kill better_.

I clicked "Yes". The game began.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** Given Card's stark violence in _Ender's Game_, I couldn't really write one of those clean, cheerful wars that the Narnia series seems to prefer.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 3: Peter<strong>

There's an old saying about pulling teeth.

I'd received forty-something of Jadis's "soldiers" for what I'd hopefully christened my platoon. After two weeks of migraines in an Advil-less world, I had a rudimentary unit.

Jadis didn't employ humans, and many of her nonhuman servants couldn't work with modern weapons. Some, like the wolves and vultures, lacked opposable thumbs. Others' spectral forms prevented them from holding things for a reasonable amount of time. The sentient plants were out, for obvious reasons. And most of the rest – Black Dwarves, Giants, Ogres, and the People of the Toadstools – had size problems. If you've ever seen a twenty-foot humanoid trying to pull a trigger, you'll understand what I mean.

That'd left me with a mess of Minotaurs, Evil Apes, Ghouls, tall Dwarves (the irony does not escape me), two Succubi, and one Hag who'd showed uncanny aim with a rifle.

With only two weeks, I'd started with the rudiments of marksmanship and weapon maintenace. Not that I knew much myself (at all), but at least I'd looked at the manuals. And at least _they_ were veterans of _something_.

I'd divided them into eleven teams of four critters apiece (one leader, three subordinates), but the organization was purely nominal. Most had fought shoulder-to-shoulder in shield walls, usually around a standard of some sort. They didn't do the whole command-and-control thing very well.

Fortunately, Aslan's forces didn't have grenades or artillery. I permitted them to bunch up. For now.

On the bright side, most came from hierarchical cultures. They brought their servants to war in roughly the same spirit that a Regency country squire would bring his manservant. So the buddy system worked well enough, with a few modifications.

As for fire discipline…pah. The Evil Apes seemed particularly fond of spraying entire magazines at targets while hooting excitedly. Worse, everybody traveled at different rates. Five-second rushes usually ended with the Minotaurs almost a football field ahead of the main body. Not to mention the Hag. Ghouls, for their part, seemed to enjoy low-crawling, while Evil Apes did not. (And yes, they referred to themselves as "Evil" Apes.) The Dwarven _hirðmenn_ seemed to delight in dueling. I lost Grikklak Somebody-Or-Othersson that way.

The "medic" had learned her craft from leather-bound books of Galenic medicine. The radiotelephone operator was a Person of the Toadstools. ("Toadstool Person", I was informed, was highly offensive. "Person of the Toadstools" was not, for reasons that were apparently self-evident). Like most People of the Toadstools, ours was a "nobleman"; his military experience mostly consisted of cattle rustling in his boggy homeland. His silver-hilted sword was roughly the size of a butterknife. He rode on the Minotaur's back in a leather harness, and did an okay job as long as he kept his spores out of the electronics.

I didn't even attempt to explain field sanitation.

We set off for Beruna fifteen days after I arrived. We didn't start moving until the sun had already sunk in the sky, painting Narnia's snowdrifts orange. Like most preindustrial people, Her Imperial Highness was apparently polychronic. Time was more a vague suggestion than a fact.

As the days crawled on, our road got deeper, wetter, and squishier. Half-frozen mud penetrated boots. Brown slush pattered, until the cold and moisture bit into everything. My calves ached each time I pulled a foot out of the mud, accompanied by a slurping sound.

It was getting warmer. The White Witch's domain was shrinking accordingly, retreating before Aslan's spring.

We arrived at Beruna after several days' march. The river was brown, and roared from decades' worth of snow melting at once.

The enemy was waiting for us.

The Narnian host across the river looked like a perverse cross between _Beowulf_ and _The_ _Wind in the Willows_. Centaurs wore gleaming Sutton Hoo style helms, complete with silver knotwork and eye-guards that looked a bit like goggles.

Dwarves with leaf-bladed spears jostled each other. They formed a wall of shields shaped like kites. At first, I thought that they had no swords, but soon noticed scabbards protruding from under the mail hauberks, their handles poking out from slits in the mail. It seemed like a tripping hazard, but I guess it must've worked well enough. Battlefield customs don't survive by shortening their users' life expectancies.

I was considering just how to pry them out of their position (Shoot across the river and reveal our advantage early? Pick off a few with a target rifle until they back up? Ford at a thinner section further upstream?) when a herald rowed across to meet us. It was a faun with a wren's feather in his hat. A herald.

The herald slopped through the shallows and handed me a rolled-up parchment. It even had a wax seal. I read it. Butchered Medieval Latin. Of course.

My eyes must have widened, since one of the Minotaurs asked me what was wrong. I showed him. He barked a laugh and passed it to the other squad leaders.

* * *

><p><em>We greet the son of Men-beyond-Narnia's-sky. As he is outnumbered, we invite him to cross the river unobstructed. If he dares. We shall wait until his troops have crossed before offering battle.<em>

_- Naierus, Centaur Lord_

* * *

><p>"Well, well…" I said. "So Christmas comes to Narnia after all."<p>

The Centaurs across the river were jeering at me, beating swords and spears against their shields. I noticed a few waving long iron javelins, like Roman _pila_ or Germanic _angons_. I doubted they'd do much damage. A warrior can usually sidestep or catch them. It's only when he's crammed into a shield wall that he loses that ability. Mine were in loose order.

I rolled the message up and handed it back to the herald.

"Convey my thanks to Lord Naierus," I said. "We'll be crossing."

The Faun bowed and clicked his hooves together. He waved at the host on the other side. The ensuing roar sent ripples through the air.

And then, as one body, they rumbled back about a hundred yards from the water's edge.

I turned to the Minotaur.

"Get the boats."

He obeyed. As we crossed, I kept as many rifles trained on the shore as I could spare rowers.

I needn't have worried. The Narnians stayed back.

Idiots.

* * *

><p>We reached the other side. Oddly enough, it reminded me of our schoolyard's back lot. I could smell grass and pollen. A bee buzzed. Possibly sentient. I narrowed my eyes and blocked the sunlight with my palm.<p>

Sixty yards, maybe. Close enough that the Narnians could use their bows, but also close enough for massed automatic fire. We hadn't quite mastered marksmanship yet, so that was just as well.

We crouched, reducing our target areas and hopefully increasing our accuracy. Slightly.

I formed my soldiers up in a half-circle around the landing site. Fool that he was, our opponent let us. Hundreds of Dwarves, big cats, and centaurs clinked in their armor. Light glinted from their helmets. Banners fwopped in the wind. I'm sure it all would have looked very intimidating and noble to someone without assault rifles.

All I saw was densely packed ranks.

Forty-odd rifles clicked.

"Fire."

It was like watching a toddler's hand sweeping across a row of dominoes. Sunlight punched through shields. Single-edged _seax_ knives fell from nerveless hands. Blood dripped through mail links. Centaurs reared and screamed and died.

Aslanist Dwarves tore at their armor. The quilted gambesons that should have protected them from crushing impacts only blocked their fingers from reaching the neat pinholes that had felled them.

A few hastily-loosed arrows thumped around us. Most had antler arrowheads. The rest were iron. None hit us.

To my left, a Ghoul banged his rifle against the ground. Jammed, presumably. Ghouls do not handle frustration well. A Dwarf named Ildrik ran in front of the firing line to get a better view – incidentally obstructing six of his fellows' lines of fire.

"DUCK!" I screamed.

He did. The rest fired over him. I made a mental note to sic a Minotaur sergeant on him later.

A few Fauns hurled yard-long darts at us from _atlatl_s. They were fletched with red feathers, and one of them buried itself in a Minotaur's bicep. He snapped the shaft, pulled the flint head out, and spat.

Centaur bows twanged. Some were recurved horn-and-sinew models, like the Scythians must have carried. Others were man-sized, and made of yew.

"Kill the Centaurs up front!"

"But the flanking force…"

…Oh. Right. I blinked and nodded. Target fixation. I'd been aware of it before, theoretically. It's surprisingly tricky to keep track of forty-odd soldiers.

Fire had slackened on my right flank. A pair of Fauns crashed into the Dwarves there, turning aside bayonet thrusts with bronze bucklers. The Kalashnikov does not make a very good spear substitute. Three of my soldiers went down.

A Minotaur plugged the gap. He gored one Faun and clubbed the other. But how had they gotten so far…?

"RELOAD!" I shrieked.

Of course. They'd forgotten that in combat, hadn't they? Some of them, at least. I was gratified when our rifle cracks became a solid wall of noise again.

The Minotaur bellowed when a pair of arrows sank into his neck. Another hit him in the chest. He collapsed. A final shudder confirmed my suspicions.

One of the Evil Apes scurried up to the body, firing over it like a parapet. His makeshift cover stopped a couple arrows. The rifle cracked in reply. Little puffs of smoke blew through the Minotaur's fur.

A Ghoul danced from one foot to another. He cackled, tossing a spent magazine over his shoulder and jiggling the second into place. Or trying.

"Get down when you reload!"

An _atlatl _dart rendered my warning irrelevant.

The Narnians were brave; some stood within ten or fifteen yards of our position before the bullets cut them down. A few skidded to our feet, dead in mid-charge. The survivors stood off near the fifty yard mark, hurling arrows and insults until they also went down.

Some of them raised their shields. Bullets shredded poplar and linden wood. A red stag bellowed, and flopped over.

Finally – _finally_ – the Narnians broke and ran.

I learned my soldiers' military experience wasn't entirely useless. They didn't tire themselves sprinting, for one thing. They knew exactly how far they could rush at the enemy before they were exhausted. And they moved well with heavy backpacks.

What followed went by quickly.

Centaurs vaulted over obstacles like gazelles. One cleared a six foot stone wall. We mostly let them go, except for one enterprising group that ripped down trees and set up a log rampart. We hit it with dynamite. Splinters and dust blasted in all directions. So did most of the Centaurs.

Another group of Centaurs and cheetahs thumped across the crest of the hill. The sun painted them as black silhouettes against the sky. Easy targets.

They went down. All of them went down. A dying Centaur is not pleasant to watch. The horse part and the human torso do not move in synchronicity when they thrash about.

The Centaurs' slower counterparts were even less fortunate. At least they seemed to have grasped the value of cover, zipping between boulders and through bushes. A bear lurched from behind a tree. He killed a Succubus with a swing of his paw before a machine gun brought him down. We kept closer together after that, and kept an eye on the bases of trees.

I started at every sound of hooves on gravel, or fur rustling through leaves.

And then, relative quiet.

* * *

><p>I checked my watch when it was over. Twenty minutes. Combat, I am told, has an odd way of manipulating time. It had seemed like an hour. The Dwarves had already started rifling through their opponents' clothing. The Hag was eating a cheetah.<p>

The tang of burned cordite mixed with the smell of death. The wind blew away from us that afternoon. Life's little mercies. I looked down and realized that my safety was still on. Seven full magazines lay at my feet. It took me a moment to work out that I'd been compulsively changing them.

"Stay alert," I said. "Clear the area first. They may not be all gone."

At least I didn't need to warn them about "wounded" Aslanists playing possum. Dwarven hatchets saw to that. One Dwarf seemed to take particular glee in stealing a tunic with embroidered wool clovers. I considered ordering them to leave the wounded alone, and then realized that the Witch would probably do worse to prisoners. So instead, I sank to my knees and threw up.

A gaggle of Dwarves passed around a wine pitcher. It was hard and sandy gray, with what looked like traces of quartz. One of them munched on that weird clove-flavored rye bread that his people preferred. Another bit the head off a dried eel.

I vomited again.

When the last screams and pops of gunfire had stopped (and the remaining prisoners had become monster-chow, to my apathetic annoyance), I sounded the bugle call for everybody to return. My soldiers took their fingers off triggers. _That_ much, I'd drilled into them.

"You're shaking, 'Locke'."

"Eh?"

"Or is it Peter now? Trembling little Peter and his queasy stomach…"

I glowered at the absurdly tall woman standing behind me. She returned the glance with those creepy gray-on-gray eyes. And a smirk.

She _almost_ convinced me. But I noticed the way that her eyes roved across the battlefield, and her fingers were clenching her wand like a vise.

Far be it from me to pass up an opportunity.

"Three hundred dead at least. Only seven on our side. Dunno about wounded. Lucky we outperformed your expectations, or I might have been pushing up daisies right now. Eh, Majesty?"

The smile dropped.

"You will teach my armorers how to make these things," she said.

"Ever heard of replaceable parts?" I said. "Smokeless powder? Brass cartridges?"

Silence.

"No? Then I'm afraid you'll just have to rely on the Wiggin Import-Export Business."

Jadis's voice took on a sweeter lilt.

"Have you ever been suspended by your arms until they pop out of their sockets, Mr. Wiggin?"

"Can't say that I have," I said. "Y'know, Your Majesty…Funny thing. I _might_ have kinda-sorta-accidentally sent a couple...historical manuscripts to Aslan."

"What?"

"Yeah. Firearm blueprints. Flintlock breechloading rifles, cartridges, Minie balls, that sort of thing. Stuff that a preindustrial society _can _build. Especially a preindustrial society that controls the territory with most of Narnia's iron and saltpeter. Which your own fiefs don't have. Oops."

I could almost hear her teeth grinding. The explosion came as expected.

"You _DARED _to—"

"Yup. Now unless you want to keep bickering, I recommend we withdraw to your castle and train a couple more platoons with these things. Before Aslan does. Heh."

"I'll hold you hostage! I'll put you through pain that you wouldn't _believe_!"

"Maybe. But Valentine has orders to cut off contact - and ammo shipments - with Narnia if I don't report in two days. For that matter, what d'you want to bet that she finds a way to get to Aslan directly?"

Jadis was shaking. Her hand clenched and unclenched around her wand, doubtless imagining that it was my throat.

"Oh, you could try anyway," I said. "It's not as if I can escape. Who knows? Val might even back down and send you more ammo. But it _would_ be a risk, wouldn't it…Majesty?"

Her laughter took me completely by surprise. It was high and soft - another surprise. Albeit accompanied by a predatory grin rather than a true smile. I wasn't sure that her pale, sharp face _could_ truly smile.

"You know…" she said. "I think we'll get along _just_ fine, Mr. Wiggin."

"Wh...huh?"

Jadis headed back to her waiting boat. The wood had been carved into the shape of a sleeping swan, and was inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

I must have been staring, since she smirked again.

"Ask me about Charn sometime," she said. "I may even tell you."

And then, the boat pushed off.

* * *

><p>"Sergeant," I said.<p>

The remaining Minotaur grunted.

"We're heading back," I said. "Run them through their drills a few more times. We'll need a training cadre."


End file.
